Patch Tentatively Scheduled for March 16th

[Auricula]

I object to the use of "stealthnerfing". Yes, it was essentially a nerf in the way it ended up working. But Maddoc has acknowledged that it was an accident that it went live when it did. And it was in the patch message to give us all a head's up, not snuck in, in spite of being premature. He has also told us that more such changes are coming, removing any trace of stealth that may be implied in not having any forewarning.

It's one thing to have legitimate complaints about the way things have gone, and to explain why it is a problem. But accusing people of things they didn't do will only leave them much less likely to listen to what you have to say. That may make you feel good for the five minutes as you write and post and read it, but could leave you ignored and out in the cold down the road.

Ummm .... how could it REALLY be an accident and announced it the patch message at the same time??

Let's see .. there was ACCIDENTALLY nicer stuff put on the LDoN merchants (Twice!!) and that was immediately corrected because, well, it was accidentally patched to live.

Perhaps I just missed it (cough), but I didn't seen any emergency patch to correct the 'nerf' that was allegedly ACCIDENTALLY patched to live, but apparently not so accidentally because it was mentioned in the patch message.

This whole attempt at damage control reminds of me of the old 'don't pee on my leg and tell me it is raining' line.

[Verdandi]

Ummm .... how could it REALLY be an accident and announced it the patch message at the same time??

Let's see .. there was ACCIDENTALLY nicer stuff put on the LDoN merchants (Twice!!) and that was immediately corrected because, well, it was accidentally patched to live.

Perhaps I just missed it (cough), but I didn't seen any emergency patch to correct the 'nerf' that was allegedly ACCIDENTALLY patched to live, but apparently not so accidentally because it was mentioned in the patch message.

This whole attempt at damage control reminds of me of the old 'don't pee on my leg and tell me it is raining' line.

You're saying he lied? There's nothing I can say to that. I can't prove otherwise. But I do know that posting opinions like that is a really great way to drive away everyone from SOE who has been listening.

I also don't know how the whole internal system before a patch works, so I have can't say how the info got in the patch message when the patch wasn't supposed to be live. But I can certainly see how it might be possible. Maybe it was sent to whoever makes the code changes with a note not to do it until whatever date, and they missed the date part and did it right away, then sent on the info to go into the patch message. It might have been a simple clerical error.

Why wasn't it emergency patched? From his posts here, it sounds like Maddoc figures he meant to do it anyway, so un-patching it and then repatching it will cause more problems than its worth, or isn't worth it given what he knows is coming down the pike. I don't know. But I do know that lots of things that weren't meant to be done have been left as they were. This apparently doesn't qualify as an "emergency" suitable for an emergency patch. We can disagree, of course, but that seems to be the way it is.

Personally, I agree completely that this has been a terrible blow to tailors. Personally, I agree that something should be done to prevent hundreds of hours and hundreds of thousands of plat from being dramatically devalued. (It's not worthless, people will still want that stuff to get to 252...but it is definitely worth a lot less.) Personally, I would love to see the changes get rolled back until they were supposed to go live. I have stacks of velious leather supplies put away, too.

But I can't make that happen. What I can do is keep explaining what I want, and why. I can keep my temper and stay civil so as to keep the lines of communication open.

I'm done trying to help here. If the community isn't interested in keeping the influence that Niami has cultivated for us, so be it.

[Lokase]

Verdandi, you and Niami have done an amazing job on this website, of this there is no doubt. The site is organized, the database is well formed and is kept up-to-date, and the forums are kept clean and provide timely and pertinent information.

Your dedication to the site has been paramount to its success; the fact that SoE developers visit the site is a testament to your work.

That being said, you can try all you want to keep the dissenting voices quieted for the benefit of the SoE developers, but that is like trying to keep the grass from growing. No matter how many times you mow it the grass will keep growing back, and inevitably weeds will pop up from time to time. Its the same for the dissenting voices that keep on popping back up on your forums. It’s the internet, you can try to stem the tide, you have done a great job at this thus far, but sometimes the tide is too strong and will eventually knock over the sand castle. I know, not the best analogy but I think you can see what I am getting at.

The changes that accidentally made it into the last patch were for many the straw that broke the camels back, too many others it is their first taste of a very bitter nerf sandwich. We all know what unchecked threads lead to… mass flames and a deterioration of not only the conversation at hand but the forum itself.

To say in one sentence:

What I can do is keep explaining what I want, and why. I can keep my temper and stay civil so as to keep the lines of communication open.

And then to say in the next sentence:

I'm done trying to help here. If the community isn't interested in keeping the influence that Niami has cultivated for us, so be it.

…shows me that you are starting to give into dissent and negativity. The two statements are contradictory. Which is it, will you stand firm or will you let the forums and inevitably the site fall into disrepair?

Personally, I think the SoE developers have much thicker skin than you give them credit for. This is not the first and most defiantly will not be the last time a change in the game will create mass dissent and negativity. The developers have seen it in the past, no doubt they have lived through it. It is just very, very unfortunate that it is now happening with the tradeskill community and to eqtraders.com. I am not condoning the rude and many times very ill informed threads that have been popping up, I am just saying given the nature of the Internet they are inevitable.

influence that Niami has cultivated

Indeed Niami has, over the years, cultivated a unique and very strong influence with the SoE developers. This tradeskill nerf hiccup is just that, a brief period of time where that influence is slightly diminished. I think the “influence” is very strong and that the SoE developers will continue to visit the site, even if they are exposed to dissenting and negative reactions. Again, the developers have seen this before, they will see it again, they are big boys and girls and know how to communicate in a hostile environment.

The changes and the resulting reactions have no doubt taken a toll on the community and now even Verdandi. Please know Verdandi that your efforts have never gone unnoticed, your dedication, patience, wisdom and perseverance will help get the community through this. Thank you for caring.

Cheers,


Plainswalker of the 70th Season
Quiet and stealthy, Lokase slips into the forest to resume the hunt.

[Verdandi]

Lokase, I appreciate your kind words. I really do. (The credit goes far beyond myself, mainly to Niami and Ngreth but also to numerous others; yet it was nice of you to say.) So I'm going to reply in spite of my resolution not to.

I understand that people need to vent. That's why we have allowed numerous threads all saying basically the same thing to spring up in several forums. People need to let it out.

And it's not the dissenting voices that are the problem. People can disagree all they like. If people never talk about their disagreements, everyone will be miserable pretty much all the time. What bothers me isn't the disagreement. It's the random flinging of mud and accusations that have no basis in the facts.

I have hit my breaking point. I'm not breaking the lines of communication, I'm acknowledging that I've said all I can say and need to leave this conversation for a while for my mental health's sake. I am under a great deal of stress right now, at work and at home, and do not need it here on the boards, too. I'm sitting here using monitor wipes as tissues to get through writing this post (they are wholly inadequate, btw).

So yea, I'm overreacting if you only consider this one issue. But who's to say that the devs aren't also under plenty of stress of their own? I sincerely doubt that the only thing they're hearing about it is what's on these boards and what we're seeing visible on their forums. And I'm sure some of it is unfit for posting on any board. No one is immune to that. I doubt it's got anyone else in tears, but it does make it harder to listen with a sympathetic ear. Groundless accusations and conspiracy theories do nothing for our credibility, especially when they're coming from so many people.

So I've asked in numerous threads for people to try to stay calm and think about the facts. People reply with more foaming at the mouth. It's just too much for me right now, personally, and I need to step back. The other mods will still keep at it, but I need to stop posting about it now. So yes, I have given in to dissent and negativity. I've hit my limit and have nothing more to give on this issue. I'm not going to rant endlessly and creatively about what I think is really happening. I'm just going to walk away from this topic. No, this one problem isn't the end of the world. Time goes on, EQ will go on, tradeskills will go on. But if our say in what happens with tradeskills is diminished as a result, that saddens me deeply.

I don't want this thread to turn into a discussion of me. I had to explain myself, but the issue at hand remains the trivial changes and our collective response thereto. Thank you.

[Nolrog]

Make the path harder, and the casual player complains... (or quits and winds up trolling boards, bad-mouthing Sony)...

Make the path easier, and the hardcore player whines about taking away something they worked so hard for. (Imagine if a college decided that you only needed 1 year of classes for an equivalent degree)

So I don't see how ANY path for them is going to be win/win...

There's an ancient Iksar saying... "You can please some of the people all of the time, and you can please all of the people some of the time... but you can't please EQ players any time"

They should make the path harder, but the skill ups more frequent. I don't mind doing something that's hard and time consuming, when there's a reward at the end. Heck, I don't even mind if it's expensive too. However, I hate having to sit there and mindlessly click combine, auto-inventory 500 times, because you need that many to get the 10-15 skill up points you want, and that's just for vendor bought recipes. To farm up 300 combines worth of velious tailoring, and all the subcombines necessary is just horrid.

Had everything been left the way that it is... no one was complaining and no one would be complaining.

People absolutely were complaining. How many times have people said they wanted a better progression, mid-to-high level recipes to bridge the gap? People complained about that all the time (perhaps more in one trade than another, but still.)

[Ngreth Thergn]

And here is a fact people seem to want to ignore.

No matter how much we want it to be...

Tradeskillers are NOT in the majority of players. We are definitely a minority.

Because of this, unless there is something causing a huge influx of platinum (and sometimes even this does not cause an emergency patch) there will not be an emergency patch impacting the MAJORITY of players for a minority of players. It is plain just NOT good business. And no matter how we WANT to put it, SOE is in here as a business. Leaving something in that will cost them a few hundred players is better than doing something else that will affect 100% of their players.

To us, tradeskills are the most important part of the game.
SOE understands that, and is interested in it. Heck. Maddoc spends a huge amount of time on tradeskills. But that said, we are a MINORITY. And a business MUST cater to the majority, no matter what the minority wants.

As for how it could happen, it could be what Verdandi said. We don't know the exact path. He may have sent it to QA, with the patch note, and ANOTHER note saying don't push... but somewhere along the line the additional note (not likley to be in the same "file" as the patch note) got missed and QA after testing sent it on to the people that make the patches. We don't know the exact reason it went in.

But it is a FACT that for whatever reason it went it... it was NOT a stealth patch, nor a Stealth Nerf.

And yet again... I will say, you can DISAGREE all you want with what SOE has done. We even encourage it. But there are ways to do it.

it is ENTIRELY possible to disagree with someone without calling them a lier, insulting them, berating them, threatening them, or just generally being rude.

THAT is what we are asking people to do here.

In no way are we saying that you cannot dissent. We are just saying that you must be polite while you do.

Sorry about the larger font there, but maybe it will make it stick in peoples head what we are doing here.
We refuse to have a full on unfettered rant board on our forums. We won't pay for the kind of filth that those things generate. Period, no compromise. Don't like it, go elsewhere... and here we are NOT a business, you will SAVE us money by leaving.
Here you can rant, complain, and whine all you want, but you cannot be rude while doing so. And it is entirely posible to do so.
Yes I am using Rude to emcompas a whole gamut of behaviour, but it the best fit in a single word. We have even allowed some extent of rudeness here, and the line may seem arbitrary, but that is the way it is, we want to allow venting here in THIS forum, so sometimes we err on the side of allowing some rudeness. We just have our limits, and being PEOPLE not computers, sometimes those limits are not exactly the same.

[Cenebi]

Ok, Here is my comment on this supposed "stealthnerfing" (Note: I completely disagree with the insults hurled at the devs).

While I am not the people responsible for nerfing trivials, I can certainly understand why they would. Getting to 300 skill is supposed to be very difficult, no matter how much money you have. So there is a good reason they don't want you to be able to simply buy everything you need. Anyone and his monkey could get to 100 in smithing, you can just buy all the materials at the merchants. Now imagine if you could do the same thing to get to 300 smithing, everyone who could afford it would get to 300 within days, which kinda ruins the point of getting there. When you have to start farming materials is when the people who are less dedicated start falling away.

Another point, what maddoc said was that the trivials were not intended to be applied yet no that they were an accident, that does not mean they were a mistake, just premature. This also explains why they would not do an emergency patch to fix it. They would just have to go back in and re-apply them, and lets face it, these guys work hard enough as it is, their not gonna make a change that they know full well they will have to undo anyways. And as Ngreth said, we are the minority, they are not going to inconvenience the rest of the people that play the game so that tailors that happened to have ingredients for the nerfed recipes could use them. It is foolish and selfish to expect them to, other people do play EQ you know.

Remember, by insulting the devs for no reason other than the fact that they made you lose money, you are rapidly losing credibility. You will simply have to get up, dust yourself off, and find other things to make. They aren't going to undo the nerfs with you calling them liars and accusing them of stealthnerfing.

Just a quick question for the person who suggested they make it harder and yet increase the skill-ups, how exactly would they accomplish this? Increasing the skill-up rate would defeat the purpose of making it harder to get the materials, which pretty much evens out the difficulty, resulting in having a patch that just makes people skill up off of a different item.

[Saleani]

they are not going to inconvenience the rest of the people that play the game

I think as more tradeskillers just stop pressing combine, the regular players get inconvenienced. I am amused when our guild has finished an elemental plane raid and folks start wondering in /gu where they can get ethereal sheets/rings/swatches. I predict a vendor in PoTranq carrying them by next year.

Who is John Galt?

[Secone]

48 hours to patch and still 0 info on what it contains ...

/starting to panic

[Aleksandros]

Looking forward to the patch Wednesday, and hoping to see all the interesting quest changes for recipe books - no idea what else may make it in beside the cultural kit fixes, promised quest changes, etc, but looking forward to it regardless.

Things have been rough for the most skilled tailors out there, and your straightjackets have been chafing a bit, but this one may bring a bit of relief.

/em straps on the fireproof apron and heads back to the forge...

[Tillinghast]

I expect a next level to the Xanthe Earring, myself. That way the new items for it will be triv 425 or thereabouts.

Tillinghast
Vendor Mule
High Hopes

[Taushar]

I, for one, am not waiting for anything. I forgone several raids to get my skill up as much as possible. I remember when they nerfed the plate armor while back. I was at about 185 and the plate armor was above 250 trivial. They nerfed it down to 188, I believe. I tried for 3 days before the nerf, when I found out, and furious spent time and money (little that I had) and try to get up and got up to 190 by the time nerf hit. After that, smithing took to back seat while I got other tradeskills up to 250. Smithing was my first tradeskills and my first love. I wanted to make armor for myself and alts. That nerf made it impossible for me to skill up anytime soon to make those armors I wanted.

So, so far I got 3 skills to 300 and should ding 300 on pottery tonight. Then possibly on to fletching and I am not sure after that. I am fully expecting the nerf to come on this patch.

Taushar

[Secone]

From what Brenlo have written in Developers Corner the only change to tradeskills vill be Essence Of Concealment ...
Now we have no other choise than trust that them.
But lets see what the patch message says ...

[miakiss]

First, I also want to make my own tribute to the massive amount of dedication that has been put into this site by Niami, Ngreth, Verdandi and all the other moderators. Also, the whole community should be proud of the quality of the data and advice that is given here.

However, I must say I have been very disappointed by the reaction to the recent tailoring trivial changes. I always saw this community as somewhere to get away from the "power gamers" and there seems to have been a change in atmosphere here, where reaching 300 before anyone else has become the goal, rather than the fun of discovering new recipes and the sharing of collective stories of trade skill "masochism"

Maybe my nostalgia for the old days when the only recipe to 200 in tailoring was the Fleeting Quiver, and that was broken, and spider silks didn't stack, is silly, but I sort of miss those times when tradeskilling was only for the completely insane

So... the main point: A couple of people have said they don't mind tradeskills being hard, and personally I think it should be very hard to reach 300. I recently went to 300 in baking, and the only challenge was killing about 15 level 10 mountain brownies and doing a lot of clicking. I even made a profit on the things. So how can this be achieved? I mean, there is no "play skill" in tradeskills - there is nothing difficult about clicking the combine button (although you needed strong wrists before the UI change).

So how else can they make it hard?

Level cap. Either through skill caps, access to drops, access to recipes or access to other items needed for combines.
Make components difficult to get - either through drop rate or the difficulty of the mobs dropping them (similar to level cap).
Add quests to obtain recipes or tools. They started this with DoN and I think it seems to work quite well, but again this is very much linked to level.

All of these have been tried in one way or another, and people have complained about them all.

Personally I like the quest approach - for example like the Shadowscream quests or the new cultural missions - but it will always need to be linked to the power of the character also. I don't see any way of making tradeskill difficulty independent of character progression until someone builds a pottery wheel with a USB interface :P

[Wyvernwill]

My only real disagreement with the tailoring changes was from the fact that the changes should have been made when DoN came out. They knew long in advance they planned to raise the tradeskill caps, it wasn't something added at the last moment as a "bonus feature."

I have a good feeling that they had completely intended to change trivials also while DoN was in development. Now, I am not trying to be harsh or even to assume I know more than those who built and run this game, however I do know business and business management. When you reward one person at work, others get jealous, or want a reward themselves. It breeds competition, and in some cases that can be extremely healthy and promotes a lot of innovation and people trying to better the way they do things in order to get the reward.

How this ties into your statement is simple. Instead of SoE rewarding people for taking a difficult path to skill up, they are punishing the ones who did not take the easy route (mind, in a very round-a-bout way) by lowering the trivials on things that others who just went the easy route took. When they lowered the trivial on tailoring, SoE basically passed along the message "ya snooze, ya lose." And that is exactly how people responded. They were caught blindsided by a change that had a massively negative impact and went up in arms. A lot have given up on finding the new recipes and figuring out if there is a better way, to turning around and saying... wait a second, I'm not letting that happen to me again.

I am guilty of that mentality. I've maxed out Fletching, Brewing, Baking, Pottery, JC all to levels that I am comfortable with them at as to be honest, I was very upset at the fact that things were changed with no warning.

Yes, once upon a time, trades were insanely tough. Spider Silks not stacking wasn't an issue to me, because I always had a sewing kit on me. Swatches always did stack. Arctic Wyvern Hides and Black Panther Skins on the other hand... those not stacking was definitely a trial in sanity.

I miss the days that tradeskills weren't being done by everyone and they were a very tough challenge. When they added the tradeskill UI, I rejoiced and cried at the same time. Happy because no longer would my hands ache at the end of a day, but upset because I knew it would being a LOT more people into tradeskills.

I want to see trades harder, but in a way... I look at SoE and get disappointed that they decide to make an unfair playing field once again, because they decided not to make this decision when DoN came out. They were the ones that instated the trivials on a lot of items at 335 in the first place. This all could have been avoided if trivial levels were changed as DoN was released, not over a month after the fact.